Dan Pulcrano

Dan Pulcrano is a journalist, newspaper owner and Web executive in San Jose, California. He is CEO and executive editor of Metro Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley’s alternative newsweekly, as well as its sister publications, Santa Cruz Weekly and the North Bay Bohemian (Santa Rosa). He also runs Boulevards New Media, a national leader in online city guides.

Early life and career

Born in suburban New Jersey, where his parents were school teachers, Pulcrano entered the publishing field while still in junior high, when he produced an “underground newspaper” at the Wardlaw Country Day School in Plainfield, NJ. He was asked to leave the school as a result and attended public schools afterwards, graduating at 16 and joining the staff of the San Diego Reader. At age 19, he went to Los Angeles to help publisher Jay Levin launch the LA Weekly.

Weekly Newspapers

After graduating from University of California at Santa Cruz, Pulcrano founded the Los Gatos Weekly in the Silicon Valley community of Los Gatos. The startup was a direct challenge to the Los Gatos Times-Observer, published since 1881. The young newspaper thrived and Pulcrano engineered the purchase of the Times-Observer in 1990 and merged the two publications into the Los Gatos Weekly-Times.

Three years after founding the Los Gatos Weekly, Pulcrano expanded his efforts into the Silicon Valley region with the launch of Metro. Inspired by Levin’s LA Weekly and the alt-weeklies that were then appearing in major American cities, Metro offered sharp-edged political analysis as well as comprehensive calendar listings, music reviews and critical coverage of the performing and visual arts, as well as movie reviews. Based in downtown San Jose, which had been in a state of decline for two decades, Metro championed arts, independent cinema, small theater and retail revitalization in the city's core. Pulcrano led the effort to establish the San Jose Downtown Association and a business improvement district as part of Metro's efforts to support San Jose's urban rebirth.

Over the next decade, Pulcrano oversaw the purchase and startups of five more community weekly newspapers in Santa Clara County, including the Saratoga News, Cupertino Courier, Sunnyvale Sun, Willow Glen Resident and Campbell Reporter. In 1999, these newspapers and the Los Gatos Weekly-Times, were spun off as the Silicon Valley Community Newspapers group, and sold to Metro co-founder David Cohen. They are now owned by Dean Singleton’s MediaNews Corp.

In 1994, Pulcrano returned to his college town of Santa Cruz, CA to launch Metro Santa Cruz and purchased the Sonoma County Independent. In 2000, he rebranded the publication North Bay Bohemian to support the Santa Rosa paper’s expanded coverage of Napa and Marin counties. Metro Santa Cruz was renamed Santa Cruz Weekly in 2009.

Online Pioneer

As the newspaper group flourished, Pulcrano launched one of Silicon Valley’s first online community portals. In 1993, as a board member of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, he wrote a paper called: The Alternative Press at the Crossroads: Will We Be Players in the New Information Age Or Road Kill on the Digital Highway? That same year, he launched Livewire, an early online player offering email, newsgroups, networking and live chatrooms.

The following year, he launched Boulevards New Media, with the stated intention of "inventing the local media of the future." The company is built around a Pulcrano’s portfolio of “cityname.com” Web domains, including Seattle.com, SanFrancisco.com, LosAngeles.com, Philadelphia.com and more than 100 others –- including 20 of the nation’s top 30 markets.

Boulevards today holds a unique position among Silicon Valley Internet companies: It has never been sold, acquired, venture-funded or taken public.

Pulcrano served as Chairman of the Board of Associated Cities, LLC for two years in 2006 & 2007. He continues to write, and to oversee operations in both his newspaper and online ventures.

External links

1. Dan Pulcrano - Naymz
2. Dan Pulcrano - LinkedIn
3. San Jose Inside - Dan Pulcrano
4. SV411 - Dan Pulcrano
5. Alternet - Dan Pulcrano
6. How Dan Pulcrano Went from Print Publisher to Web Pioneer
7. Dan Pulcrano's 2006 introduction of Craig Newmark at AAN West Convention
8. Dan Pulcrano Interview
9. Associated Cities

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Name	Pulcrano, Dan
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